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Exclusive| R Madhavan on toxic masculinity in Bollywood: There is no actor whose one film or the other is not about it
R Madhavan questions representation of toxic masculinity in Bollywood by its heroes as he reflects on the change since Rehna Hai Terre Dil Mein to Aap Jaisa Koi
R Madhavan made his Hindi film debut 24 years ago with Rehna Hai Terre Dil Mein (RHTDM), and while the film became a cult classic over the years, his character Maddy in the film has been called out multiple times for being patriarchal. In his upcoming film Aap Jaisa Koi, he plays an ageing man, struggling to find love due to his conditioning in a patriarchal society.
Ask him how men with patriarchal mindset have changed in these years on screen and R Madhavan says, “If you look back at any Hindi film hero, you will find that he is completely flawed because that’s part of the way Indian culture has been represented. There is no actor in the Hindi film industry whose one film or the other is not about toxic masculinity. Don’t take only RHTDM, take any film before that. Any hero who has slapped a woman on screen or any actor who has abused a woman in films is toxic. Name one actor who hasn’t done that. So, if you look at it in retrospect, you are going to confuse yourself completely.”
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The actor insists that men in films should be seen from the lens of the time they were written and executed in. “What were the circumstances when a guy fell in love during the RHTDM days? We didn’t have some bars where you can go and meet a girl and tell your parents ‘aapki bahu ko main wahaan se le aaya’. In our country, at least in villages, you have social functions like weddings and festivals where you get to meet and interact with people whom you might get attracted to and fall in love. And even in cities, you didn’t have mobile phones as such to get in touch with them,” he says.
Madhavan adds, “If I saw a beautiful girl in the train, how do I get in touch with her? Even if my intentions are completely noble and without malice, how do I tell her that I like her? If I keep a letter that she’s given me, it’s considered creepy right now. So, we have to change our understanding of what masculinity is right now.”
The actor even relates it to the dichotomy in Aap Jaisa Koi. “In which part of the world a man considers his bhabhi a mother? Which other culture do you see that happening in? But because of this conditioning, he is toxic for the relationship he is getting into. At one place, he has seen the women in his house as mothers, and on the other hand, he is taught to treat women in a certain way because of how women in his house are behaving. And he is expecting that from his partner. So, even though the intention is not there, his act comes out as offensive.”
Reflecting back to RHTDM, Madhavan says, “In that film, if I was able to open the door for the girl, or if I stood up for her and beat somebody up because he thinks they are being wrong, for that time it was correct. It was seen as he was putting his life on the line for the girl. But now it’s considered that this guy is violent. That is the journey of how men have been perceived in the society.”
He even talks about how his character in Saathiya has also not aged well in the society. “It was my first romantic film where I see a girl in a wedding and I don’t know how to find her. All I know is that she is a doctor from Chennai. So, my character actually does a calculation like how many girls go from that particular train station, from them how many go to the medical college. Out of them, how many are from the hometown that the girl is from. So, he narrows it down to a list of 65 girls, out of which she is the one. Aaj ke zamaane mein isko bola jayega ki ye to stalker hai. But Mani Ratnam didn’t see it that way, that time it was considered romantic. If you look at it from the lens of now, even a Mani Ratnam hero is flawed. So, we should be kind to the man as per the era it was portrayed in,” he ends.
